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7 days in the cloud: My week with the Samsung Chromebook

Submitted by srlinuxx on Tuesday 19th of July 2011 02:05:42 AM

It was the best of devices; it was the worst of devices.

When I first agreed to write about a week working with nothing but a Samsung Series 5 Chromebook, I knew I was asking for trouble. Although I already knew and liked its Chrome Web-browser-based Linux operating system, ChromeOS, I also know how I work.

You see, on a normal day, I don’t work on just any one computer, or even just one operating system. I usually work on at least three systems and one of those is always running Mint Linux, while another is usually running Ubuntu and one keeps flipping its little mind from Windows 7 to XP depending on what I’m doing to Windows that day. Me? Work on just one computer, and that a small laptop to boot? This wouldn’t be easy.

But, brave soul that I am, I decided to give it a try. This is what I found. I warn you now, it’s a tale of both triumph and tragedy. Well, OK, so it’s really a story of what worked and what didn’t work, but you get the idea.

More in Tux Machines

How CERN Is Using Linux and Open Source

CERN really needs no introduction. Among other things, the European Organization for Nuclear Research created the World Wide Web and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, which was used in discovery of the Higgs boson. Tim Bell, who is responsible for the organization’s IT Operating Systems and Infrastructure group, says the goal of his team is “to provide the compute facility for 13,000 physicists around the world to analyze those collisions, understand what the universe is made of and how it works.”

WhiteSource Rolls Out New Open Source Security Detector

WhiteSource on Tuesday launched its next-generation software composition analysis (SCA) technology, dubbed "Effective Usage Analysis," with the promise that it can reduce open source vulnerability alerts by 70 percent.
The newly developed technology provides details beyond which components are present in the application. It provides actionable insights into how components are being used. It also evaluates their impact on the security of the application.
The new solution shows which vulnerabilities are effective. For instance, it can identify which vulnerabilities get calls from the proprietary code.

Announcing “e Foundation” for eelo

I’m pleased to announce that a non-profit organization has been incorporated to support the project: e Foundation.
“e Foundation” will host core eelo assets and fuel the development of eelo software.
This non-profit organization will be able to receive private and public grants, as well as donations from individuals, from anywhere in the world. We’re also working to add a legal way so that donations could benefit from tax cuts, as it’s often possible when donating to “in the public interest” organizations.
As soon as a bank account will be ready for “e Foundation”, we will move there all donations and our “in demand” crowdfunding campaign.

RIP Robin "Roblimo" Miller

Linux Journal has learned fellow journalist and long-time voice of the Linux community Robin "Roblimo" Miller has passed away. Miller was perhaps best known by the community for his roll as Editor in Chief of Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned Slashdot, SourceForge.net, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, and ThinkGeek from 2000 to 2008. He went on to write and do video interviews for FOSS Force, penned articles for several publications, and authored three books, The Online Rules of Successful Companies, Point & Click Linux!, and Point & Click OpenOffice.org, all published by Prentice Hall.

Graphics: XWayland and Mesa

While the recently released X.Org Server 1.20 has initial support for XWayland with EGLStreams so X11 applications/games on Wayland can still benefit from hardware acceleration, in its current state it doesn't integrate too well with Wayland desktop compositors wishing to support it. That's changing with a new patch series.

Based off the Gallium3D "mesa_glthread" work for threaded OpenGL that can provide a measurable win in some scenarios, the Intel i965 Mesa driver has implemented this support now too.
Following the work squared away last year led in the RadeonSI driver, the Intel i965 OpenGL driver supports threaded OpenGL when the mesa_glthread=true environment variable is set.

With the recent Mesa 18.1 release there is OpenGL 3.1 support with the ARB_compatibility context for the key Gallium3D drivers, but Marek Olšák at AMD continues working on extending that functionality under the OpenGL compatibility context mode.

Following the news from earlier this month that FreeDesktop.org would move its infrastructure to Gitlab, the Mesa3D project has begun the process of adopting this Git-centered software.

Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04: Make yourself at GNOME. Cup of data-slurping dispute, anyone?

Comment Ubuntu 18.04, launched last month, included a new Welcome application that runs the first time you boot into your new install. The Welcome app does several things, including offering to opt you out of Canonical's new data collection tool.
The tool also provides a quick overview of the new GNOME interface, and offers to set up Livepatch (for kernel patching without a reboot).
In my review I called the opt-out a ham-fisted decision, but did note that if Canonical wanted to actually gather data, opt-out was probably the best choice.